In 2020, Covid-19 hit the world with such ferocity, and at such a pace, that our social fabric changed beyond recognition virtually overnight. When the country ground to a halt in March 2020, we knew the people we traditionally work with would be among those hit hardest by the isolation of life, in a city, under lockdown. We wanted to reconnect with them, hear their voices, find out what it has been like, and how their local authority has responded and taken care of their population. It is urgent that we tell the story of Covid-19 from these perspectives – voices that we do not usually hear in mainstream media. At CityLife, we moved to making the project safe immediately, by transferring to remote working and adapting our methodology.

We have been fortunate enough to secure funding from the British Academy, and we are using it to both continue supporting our storytelling work in the community, and to build new relationships as well. We are working on a number of new stories with storytellers from our new community partner Toynbee Hall, an amazing charity working to combat poverty and social exclusion in East London and elsewhere. We are also welcoming back a number of our elders from Cody Dock, Pepper Pot Day Centre, and Ageing Well Dagenham, and many more we have been in touch with individually throughout the years.

The writers are a mix of CityLife veterans from the University of East London, who have written and participated in previous phases, and a new group of Creative Writing students at the University of East Anglia. Welcome to our community, writers, and good luck with your stories!

We believe that helping to process this time of collective trauma through a creative practice is one of the most cathartic and healing ways forward. We also believe that research based on interactions with the community is only too important right now, so we are working to give it as wide a platform as possible, with a view to using it to influence policy at a local level. Now, more than ever, every minute we spend listening to other people’s experiences is precious. We will be back in 2021 with our communities’ stories of Covid-19, and any other life stories our storytellers and writers shared with us.